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I struggled for a while really when the need to convert drawing to digital format arose. Being an Artist, it is really getting essential to get ourselves and our art online and sometimes really important to create vector files that are scale-able.

When I started workinig digitally, i right away started with working directly through illustrator and Learned the Basics of Vector to get started. If you have a blog or shop or website where you would like to sell your digital artworks ( Read my post on How to sell art online here ) or maybe just plainly want to transfer your work into digital format to color it digitally , first thing first , you need to get it into a line work that is digitally supported.

For digital Artwork , or maybe coloring pages you need to have a clean and crisp black and white line. Here is a little tutorial for really novice artists who would like to do that.

1-Draw Clean and Bold

Draw with pencil or directly whatever is comfortable for you , keeping in mind that what you are drawing will be scanned and digitally modified and manipulated. More crisp and clean line you have easier it becomes to convert drawing to digital format.

I like to start my drawing with pencil , once I am done with the basic idea , I like to switch directly to a black Fine tipped marker to fill in the details. As I don’t like to rework on my details 🙂 . So it is totally up to you how you draw but the lines must be Clean and Bold .

The tools I use for drawing are

2-Importance of Right Tools

Nothing can be worst than finishing your pre sketch with pencil and when you start drawing you realize that your sharpie or marker is out of ink!.

Make sure that you have a well-filled marker that gives clean edges. Rough edges means MORE touching up after the artwork is digitally altered.

3- Scan high res

I like to scan my artwork on high resolution , you can ALWAYS go down but you cant go up and scale a pixel image . Also i like to keep my scanner settings to colored and NOT BLACK AND WHITE. Black and white scans give a line contrast that is too much to handle and doesn’t give a smooth line in a final black and white image.

4-Adjust Curves and Brightness.

Finally in Photoshop you can adjust the Curves and play around with the brightness and contrast to get a clean and crisp image quality.

5-Vactorize!

Last but not the least , you can copy your final clean image Ctrl+A (select all) and place Ctrl+V (Paste) into illustrator and then trace it !

Result is a clean crisp outline that you can scale to any size you like WITHOUT LOOSING its line quality. Some additional steps you might want to take after the vactorization step is complete is to convert it to outline and clean the white area . I have explained cleaning the outlines in another post that you can Read about Right here.

Keen on finding a way to save some graphic design time ? and batch process some Pngs into JPGs . I am mostly working in Photoshop and i like to keep my images quality closest possible to the original file . For this i use Photoshop Actions to create short cuts to accomplish a job where a batch processing might be required to handle images. (more…)

This post is targeted towards designers , small business owners or work at home moms . Who are in their initial stages of business . Trying to get their identity established . Or simply put , have a very small budget to begin with.

One of the many ways to save some bucks is to print the identity at home .
Here are some tips on printing your own business cards at home and do it frugally. (more…)

I often receive this question so that how to convert the photoshop brushes to Paint Shop Pro brushes , though i am Completely a Photoshop person and do not ever use Paint shop Pro , but since most of the users who download brushes from my shop do use Paint shop Pro and ask this question….. here is how it is done

1. Start Paint Shop Pro
2. Go to File -> Open and browse to the folder where the .png files are
3. Paint Shop Pro can not handle brushes bigger than 999px and in older versions 600px you’ll have to go to resize the image to make a copatable brush for this go to Image->Resize the bigger side will be reduced to minimum 999px
4. Go to File->Export->Custom Brush
5. name it , and hit OK
6. In “Edit Paths” make sure you export the brush into your default Paint Shop Pro brush folder.
7. The new brush is available to play around with!

And Voila! Here they are! Your brand new Photoshop Brushes are now in Paint Shop Pro.

The brushes that i offer through my store do come with PNG files to make it easier for you to use either as a digital stamp OR convert it to your own brush set for your software of use.

1. Go to: FILE>OPEN>and open up any of the frames that you would like to use as an overlay , here i browsed and opened up a frame from the calender photoshop brushes set (remember? facebook fans received it for free? still free to download through the store)

When you have opened the png You will see some Grey and white boxes behind around the frames don’t be alarmed since it is a png file this area means it is transparent.

i chose to use this frame go ahead right click and save it to your disk if you want.